1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of video systems utilizing a liquid crystal display (LCD), and in particular, to video systems utilizing normally white liquid crystal on silicon imagers.
2. Description of Related Art
Liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) can be thought of as one large liquid crystal formed on a silicon wafer. The silicon wafer is divided into an incremental array of tiny plate electrodes. A tiny incremental region of the liquid crystal is influenced by the electric field generated by each tiny plate and the common plate. Each such tiny plate and corresponding liquid crystal region are together referred to as a cell of the imager. Each cell corresponds to an individually controllable pixel. A common plate electrode is disposed on the other side of the liquid crystal. Each cell, or pixel, remains lighted with the same intensity until the input signal is changed, thus acting as a sample and hold. The pixel does not decay, as is the case with the phosphors in a cathode ray tube. Each set of common and variable plate electrodes forms an imager. One imager is provided for each color, in this case, one imager each for red, green and blue.
It is typical to drive the imager of an LCOS display with a frame-doubled signal to avoid 30 Hz flicker, by sending first a normal frame (positive picture) and then an inverted frame (negative picture) in response to a given input picture. The generation of positive and negative pictures ensures that each pixel will be written with a positive electric field followed by a negative electric field. The resulting drive field has a zero DC component, which is necessary to avoid the image sticking, and ultimately, permanent degradation of the imager. It has been determined that the human eye responds to the average value of the brightness of the pixels produced by these positive and negative pictures.
The drive voltages are supplied to plate electrodes on each side of the LCOS array. In the presently preferred LCOS system to which the inventive arrangements pertain, the common plate is always at a potential of about 8 volts. This voltage can be adjustable. Each of the other plates in the array of tiny plates is operated in two voltage ranges. For positive pictures, the voltage varies between 0 volts and 8 volts. For negative pictures the voltage varies between 8 volts and 16 volts.
The light supplied to the imager, and therefore supplied to each cell of the imager, is field polarized. Each liquid crystal cell rotates the polarization of the input light responsive to the root mean square (RMS) value of the electric field applied to the cell by the plate electrodes. Generally speaking, the cells are not responsive to the polarity (positive or negative) of the applied electric field. Rather, the brightness of each pixel's cell is generally only a function of the rotation of the polarization of the light incident on the cell. As a practical matter, however, it has been found that the brightness can vary somewhat between the positive and negative field polarities for the same polarization rotation of the light. Such variation of the brightness can cause an undesirable flicker in the displayed picture.
In this embodiment, in the case of either positive or negative pictures, as the field driving the cells approaches a zero electric field strength, corresponding to 8 volts, the closer each cell comes to white, corresponding to a full on condition. Other systems are possible, for example where the common voltage is set to 0 volts. It will be appreciated that the inventive arrangements taught herein are applicable to all such positive and negative field LCOS imager driving systems.
Pictures are defined as positive pictures when the variable voltage applied to the tiny plate electrodes is less than the voltage applied to the common plate electrode, because the higher the tiny plate electrode voltage, the brighter the pixels. Conversely, pictures are defined as negative pictures when the variable voltage applied to the tiny plate electrodes is greater than the voltage applied to the common plate electrode, because the higher the tiny plate electrode voltage, the darker the pixels. The designations of pictures as positive or negative should not be confused with terms used to distinguish field types in interlaced video formats.
The present state of the art in LCOS requires the adjustment of the common-mode electrode voltage, denoted VITO, to be precisely between the positive and negative field drive for the LCOS. The subscript ITO refers to the material indium tin oxide. The average balance is necessary in order to minimize flicker, as well as to prevent a phenomenon known as image sticking.
A light engine having an LCOS imager has a severe non-linearity in the display transfer function, which can be corrected by a digital lookup table, referred to as a gamma table. The gamma table corrects for the differences in gain in the transfer function. Notwithstanding this correction, the strong non-linearity of the LCOS imaging transfer function for a normally white LCOS imager means that dark areas have a very low light-versus-voltage gain. Thus, at lower brightness levels, adjacent pixels that are only moderately different in brightness need to be driven by very different voltage levels. This produces a fringing electrical field having a component orthogonal to the desired field. This orthogonal field produces a brighter than desired pixel, which in turn can produce undesired bright edges on objects. The presence of such orthogonal fields is denoted disclination. The image artifact caused by disclination and perceived by the viewer is denoted sparkle. The areas of the picture in which disclination occurs appear to have sparkles of light over the underlying image. In effect, dark pixels affected by disclination are too bright, often five times as bright as they should be. Sparkle comes in red, green and blue colors, for each color produced by the imagers. However, the green sparkle is the most evident when the problem occurs. Accordingly, the image artifact caused by disclination-is also referred to as the green sparkle problem.
LCOS imaging is a new technology and green sparkle caused by disclination is a new kind of problem. Various proposed solutions by others include signal processing the entire luminance component of the picture, and in so doing, degrade the quality of the entire picture. The trade-off for reducing disclination and the resulting sparkle is a picture with virtually no horizontal sharpness at all. Picture detail and sharpness simply cannot be sacrificed in that fashion.
One skilled in the art would expect the sparkle artifact problem attributed to disclination to be addressed and ultimately solved in the imager as that is where the disclination occurs. However, in an emerging technology such as LCOS, there simply isn't an opportunity for parties other than the manufacturer of the LCOS imagers to fix the problem in the imagers. Moreover, there is no indication that an imager-based solution would be applicable to all LCOS imagers. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to provide a solution to this problem that can be implemented without modifying the LCOS imagers.